


Routine Haunting

by hunters_retreat



Series: SPNCIS [6]
Category: NCIS, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Crossover, M/M, Supernatural Law Enforcement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-04
Updated: 2012-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-11 08:10:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7040308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunters_retreat/pseuds/hunters_retreat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony shivered and it had nothing to do with the dead bodies and everything to do with the words routine and haunting being used in the same sentence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Routine Haunting

 

  
“It looks like a routine haunting,” Sam Winchester said as his brother Dean hit the clicker to change the large screen they were looking at.  Two pictures of each of the five couples showed up; one before death and one after. 

Tony shivered and it had nothing to do with the dead bodies and everything to do with the words routine and haunting being used in the same sentence.

“When did our lives become so strange that there is such thing as a routine haunting?” Tony asked.  McGee gave a little huff that Tony knew was agreement.  Sam looked back at him as he voiced his opinion though, eyes smiling far wider than his lips did, before he looked towards his brother.

“Welcome to our lives,” Dean smiled back at Tony.  He had the same mirth in his eyes as Sam and it always annoyed Tony that Sam and Dean seemed to be inwardly laughing at the rest of them while they were playing catch up in the supernatural world.  The field agents of the NCIS special SPNCIS division had as much training as they could; knew how to recite Latin exorcisms in their sleep, carried things like lead and silver and salt as part of their everyday gear now, but they would never be allowed to forget that Sam and Dean Winchester were hunting ghosts while they were practically in diapers.

And that was another thing that bothered Tony, because Dean always said it with a teasing laugh but if you asked Dean when he started hunting, the answer was never straight forward and Sam was even harder to pin down.  They didn’t talk about their past and unless it related to a specific case, they didn’t give out personal details of hunts either.  A slip made in their earliest hunt together let Tony know that Sam had been hunting by the time he’d turned 14.  He made a comment that he’d been hunting all his life, but before Tony could ask more Dean had shown up and whatever passed between the brothers had been enough to silence Sam.  He’d never let anything else slip again.

“So, a haunting?  You’re sure it’s not a serial killer or something?”

Sam looked at him and back at Dean before cocking his head to the side.  “You think ghosts should count as serial killers?  They use the exact same MOs, generally use the same methodology each time, and won’t stop until you stop them.”

“Reclassify them on your own time, Winchester,” Gibbs commented, forcing Sam and Dean back to the screen in front of them.  They all knew it was better to cut them off early because once the two got caught in their heads they had a tendency to start speaking in this freakish combination of combined experience and intuitive interpretation that left the rest of the team out of it.

Like the time they’d managed to figure out a case when Sam muttered, “grave robbers?” and Dean muttered an angry, “hungry fuckers,” before they both began typing away at their keyboards and Sam was pulling up graveyard sites and Dean was plugging in utilities and they found that the three murder sites were all connected to a tunnel that had once been part of the underground railroad.  The tunnels opened up into mausoleums in each cemetery and apparently ghouls had attacked men who had interrupted their feast on the dead by coming to pay their respects.

Tony shivered again at the thought of ghouls but turned his attention back to the brothers as Sam began talking.  “The ghost is picking people up at Woodridge Park.  I’m sure you remember there were traces of-”

“Sammy.”  Dean interrupted, arms crossed over his chest as Sam was about to start into one of those science babbles he and Abby were so fond of.

“Right.  Abby was able to trace the dirt we found on the shoes of four of the victims.  We believe that there is some sort of significance to the ghost and that park.”

“What sort of significance?” McGee asked.

“It’s most likely the ghost either died at the location,” Dean answered, “or was abducted in some way from it.  Ghosts stick to a place of importance to them unless something of theirs is holding them to the world; a lock of hair, a piece of jewelry, something that really mattered to them that they would follow.  Since there doesn’t seem to be any connection between victims it’s most likely their haunting place.”

“So we need to find someone who died of asphyxiation at the park?”  Tony asked.  His head hurt trying to figure out these sort of cases.  He was a good cop, he knew that, and an even better NCIS agent.  He had a knack for the work but sometimes the supernatural still got to him.

It wasn’t that different from any other case, but the fact that he was looking for a ghost still made his mind whirl.

“We need to see if there were any surveillance cameras in the areas where the couples were found.  Something might have shown up on tape that the locals didn’t notice or don’t want to admit to.  We also need to look for anyone that died of asphyxiation in the entire area.  My guess is she was taken from the park but didn’t die there,” Dean answered.

“Wait, the ghost is picking couples because it was lured there by someone else in the first place,” Tony finally put it together.  He could see Dean’s smile without looking.  “So most likely our ghost is a woman who died or went missing.”

“That’s what we were thinking.”  Sam said as he shut off the screen.

“McGee,” Gibbs barked out the agent’s name.

“Seeing what camera feeds I can get.  On it, Boss.”

“Winchesters.”

“Heading to public records,” Sam answered before Dean could.  “We’ll see how far back we can trace the deaths.  Locals said they don’t have their reports on file for more than the last ten years.”

Dean was glaring at Sam but Tony smirked at the brothers because there was nothing Sam seemed to like more than doing some research and Dean despised it, no matter that he’d always follow after Sam when he said it.  They knew what they were looking for so they were the likely pair to go, but it was another one of those moments, watching the way Sam and Dean worked together, where Tony felt his spidey sense getting all tingly.  There was still nothing concrete, but there was just something off about the brothers and it wasn’t something Tony had felt when it was just Dean on the team.

“DiNozzo.”

“Yeah Boss?”

“With me.”

He didn’t question it because he already knew where they were headed.  The brothers were looking up the murders and McGee was getting tape.  There was a park that needed to be visited and Gibbs hated sitting around waiting for a new body to show up and in supernatural cases, they piled up high if you didn’t figure it out quick.

Tony grabbed his gear and headed out with his boss, taking a certain pleasure in the fact that he’d have Gibbs’ undivided attention for a little while.  True, it was heading to a possible abduction site, but he’d take what he could get.

He didn’t lie to himself about his need to prove himself to Gibbs.  People might think he was just an oversized kid who had Daddy issues – and they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong – but whatever ran between him and Gibbs had nothing to do with familial bonds.  When he’d first started at NCIS, he’d felt a strange attraction to the man.  He’d done everything he could to prove himself and realized too soon that Gibbs didn’t smile enough.  It’d become part of his internal job description to make sure Gibbs remembered how every so often.  It wasn’t always easy and sometimes he wondered why the hell he came back for the abuse – because in some cases that’s exactly how it felt – but he never really wondered for long.  He was always pulled back by blue eyes and a need to right the wrongs of the world.  He was pulled back by his need for justice and his love for a man that would probably kick his ass ten ways from Sunday if he ever did something about it.

Still, Tony had Gibbs’ six and nothing was gonna change that.  Not some crazy longing in his head and not some supernatural thing either.

“You think we’ll find this thing in time?”

Gibbs let out a deep breath as he started the car up.  “We better.  The local press is starting to ask the sort of questions that put the light on the supernatural again and they’re looking at SPNCIS to figure it out.”

It happened more and more lately, that Gibbs let out little tidbits like that with him, sharing whatever the hell was bothering him.  Tony nodded because false platitudes would never please Gibbs.

“We haven’t let them down yet,” he offered instead.  Gibbs flashed him a smile and Tony returned it before a comforting silence filled the car.

Gibbs had that effect on him, the ability to calm his always moving mind, a place to rest and be at ease.  An odd thing to think about one Leroy Jethro Gibbs who had the whole navy yard ready to jump to when he walked through the door, but there it was.  DiNozzo had learned a long time ago to take the good with the bad.

It took twenty minutes to get to the park and Tony spent the time replaying what they knew of the case in his head.  It was early still when they pulled into the park and the abductions seemed to be happening in the early evening so they should be safe, but Tony kept close to Gibbs just in case.  Training said ghosts never changed their habits but Sam and Dean said rarely, not never and Tony believed the brothers.  No matter what else he thought about them, Sam and Dean knew their job. 

“Wonder what they were like before the badges,” Tony said softly as they walked through the park towards the area where the victims had last been seen.

Gibbs looked at him for a minute before seeming to understand what he was talking about.  “Not sure I want to know.  You know how reckless Dean is now.  Imagine him without a team to back him up.”

Tony shook his head.  “He had Sam.”

“Until Stanford.”

Tony didn’t say anything about that.  They both knew that Dean’s hospital stays had increased significantly in those two years between Sam going away and Gibbs finding him.  He doubted Sam knew, but then Sam seemed to be pretty good at ignoring the things he didn’t want to see; must be a Winchester trait because the brothers were both damn good at it, especially when it came to one another.

They arrived at the location and Gibbs began walking the perimeter of the area they’d decided was problematic and Tony started at the heart of it, working his way out to see if there was anything that might have been missed before.  There had to be some significance to the area besides it being a dumping ground.

They continued going, moving quietly when something finally caught Tony’s eye.  He stopped and pulled out his phone.  Dean answered in one ring.  “You find any names yet?” Tony asked.

“A lot of people over the years have been found dumped in that park or were reported missing from there,” Dean answered.

There was a small scuffle and Tony smiled because he knew Sam was on the line now.  “What did you find Tony?”

Gibbs was at his side then, having noticed the phone call.  “The initials S. V. carved into a tree.  It might not be anything but if the victim was lured here…”

“Samantha Verian.  She disappeared in 1958.  Her family said she was meeting someone in secret at the park.  She was found ten years later, traumatized and abused.  She escaped her kidnapper.  She died in 1972.”

“Is this her?”

“I can’t find anything earlier and other missing person reports start in 1973.  And get this.  There were scars all around her neck.  The medical records say that she was repeatedly choked by something like a wire or cord.”

“We got her,” Tony whispered to Gibbs.

“Getting her burial info now.  I’ll text you the information when we have clearance for the salt and burn.”

“We’ll be waiting for it.”

Tony hung up and relayed the information for Gibbs.  They couldn’t leave the area in case Verian came back tonight for someone else but Sam would take care of the rest of it.  That was what he was there for after all.  He had the connections to get them through the red tape that came with exhuming bodies.

“Good eye, DiNozzo.”  Gibbs said, his eyes tracking over the empty park.  There had been enough news about the dumping site that no one seemed willing to come to the park and Tony knew they were all happy enough to have the park to themselves as they worked. 

“Thanks, Boss.”  It wasn’t often that Gibbs complimented them on the job.  Gibbs had high expectations for his people and he expected them to be met.  Staying on Gibbs’ team was a compliment in and of itself.  Getting an extra pat on the back every so often was because they’d managed to show him something more than usual and Tony felt lighter for the words.

“When I brought Dean on the team, it was because he was good at this.  He had an eye for the supernatural because he’d been fighting it all his life.  I knew that as soon as I saw him, rifle in hand, shooting something that we hadn’t been able to get a handle on yet.  Ducky can’t accept Dean and Sam’s explanation to things and he’s made no bone about it.  Abby and McGee and Jimmy looked to you to figure out how to handle that and I know what you did, Tony.”  Gibbs turned his gaze on Tony and as much as he wanted to squirm, he wanted to know what Gibbs was trying to say.

“You didn’t put your faith in Dean or in Sam.  You put your faith in me.  You trusted my opinion and you let the others see that.  We’ve all had our doubts about what’s out there, especially when Sam starts talking about lore for things they’ve never seen, but he can do his job and Dean can do his job without worrying about who has their back because you keep that faith.  I don’t think I’ve said thank you, but I noticed it when I hired Dean and I notice it now.”

Tony’s mouth felt dry and he had to swallow against the lump that had formed in his throat.  It wasn’t a big deal, certainly not as big a thing as Gibbs was making it out to be, but Tony would always make sure the team worked and that Gibbs had his six covered as well.  He had to know that by now.

“I’ve always got your back,” Tony said.

Gibbs stepped closer, one hand coming up to the back of Tony’s head and instead of the head slap he got the soft caress that so rarely came.  “I know you do Tony.”

Tony didn’t know what the look in Gibbs’ eye meant but the air felt thicker and he wanted to drown in that moment, just the two of them with this thing building.  Tony swallowed hard again and Gibbs’ eyes tracked the movement.

Tony leaned closer, uncertain, needing to understand, but a shrill ringtone broke the silence and Gibbs stepped back as Tony pulled his phone out to see the text message from Dean.

“Sam and Dean took McGee on the salt and burn.”

“I’m going for coffee.  Keep an eye out.”

It was already over, the hunt, or Gibbs wouldn’t walk away but Tony did as he was asked anyway.  When Gibbs came back, he handed a cup of coffee over to Tony and walked away, policing the perimeter again.  An hour later, when Sam texted to say they were done and headed back to the office, Tony and Gibbs returned as well.

Gibbs sent them all home once they returned and Tony sat at his desk, typing out his report of the day, trying hard not to imagine what might have been in Gibbs’ eyes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the awesome [](http://smidgeson.livejournal.com/profile)[smidgeson](http://smidgeson.livejournal.com/) for being an awesome beta!


End file.
